Quote Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory View Post
Deja vu and it's too early to talk about our fullbacks and keeper because I remember Clichy, Denilson and Vela looking great in the early days. Regardless, if we're saying that they're our future, they will soon hit a brick wall, or glass ceiling with the wages because we won't change our wage structure. The set up we have now with players like Poldoski, Cazorla and Arteta is similar to what we used to do. They're not on silly wages and we'd have more of a chance of winning something with experience over youth.

That line about Man Utd and the £100m in sponsorship money brings back memories too. Back in the Highbury days, I remember the club saying our Nike sponsorship deal was crap and we needed to move stadiums to compete with United because Highbury was too small. Wash and repeat! Caught in the matrix.
Clichy was very good and a successful player from our youth scheme. He was good for us and we sold him for a lot more than we bought him for. Vela, not so much but the club turned a big profit on him as well.

And you cannot ignore what happened with City and Chelsea entering the fray being a big reason why we cannot compete. But here is the truth that many of us never want to accept, Arsenal is and have always been a 2nd tier team. We have never competed with United, Madrid, Bayern, Barca, and only started doing it on a small scale because Wenger and co discovered undervalued player markets. Now everyone else has caught up, and City and Chelsea can spend more than everyone, and surpassed us there so we need to find another undervalued market.


I type all of this not to defend the board, but its not as easy as fans want it to be. I just hope FFP works, but I have my doubts because a)I dont think its enforceable b)if it is enforceable, Arsenal will still be behind United and the other true elite clubs like Bayern and Madrid because the principles of FFP favors the already big clubs.